Rochester Reads Discussion Points for American War

Discussion Points for American War

The Author’s Craft

• The book has two epigraphs. The first, from the 10th century Kitab al-Aghani, or The Book of Songs, reads “The one you must punish is the one who punishes you.” How does this set the tone for the book?

• The book begins with a Prologue in the voice of Sarat Chestnut’s nephew Benjamin, the first line of which is “When I was young, I collected postcards.” This single, simple line is actually quite informative and provocative. How do the use of first person, the verb “collect,” the reference to the past, and the nostalgia attached to the idea of postcards impact the reader (emotionally)?

• How does the author inform the reader about the initial setting of the narrative?

• The narration of the novel is framed in the first person and is retrospective: Benjamin Chestnut is looking back on his aunt Sarat’s experience as a girl and young woman. How would the narration, and by extension the entire novel, have been different if the narration was from the perspective of Sarat herself? Or presented as direct excerpts from Sarat’s journals, and therefore in her own voice?

• How does the author humanize Sarat?

• How are the personalities of the various characters revealed through small details?

• How are the complications of family relationships depicted? How do they change over time?

• In what ways does the author balance the story of war with the stories of each member of the Chestnut family?

• Discuss the author’s writing style, including sentence structure, diction, tone, setting, narrative structure, and use of imagery and figurative language such as metaphors.

• What portions or aspects of the writing did you find most artful and/or enjoyable to read?

• Author Omar El Akkad wrote, “I was thinking a lot about home when I was writing this story. I don’t have a very good answer to the question, ‘Where are you from?’ I was born in one country, but I left it when I was five. I grew up in another country. I consider Canada my home, but I didn’t [go] to Canada until I was 16 years old. And now I live in the United States, which I don’t consider my home, but is physically my home for the time being. I was trying to deconstruct what home means and I came up with a hierarchy. The very bottom of which is just the right to live in peace and at the very top end of which is the right to fundamentally alter your surroundings. The book is concerned with this idea of home, not as a location, not even as a state of mind or an allegiance, but rather as trying to work your way up that hierarchy.” How do you as a reader see these ideas or sentiments playing out in the novel? Or in your own life?

• The main narrative opens with a striking image of a young girl pouring honey into the knots of a wood-plank floor. The honey is in a bear-shaped bottle, which is familiar to many Americans and immediately ties this future setting to our own era (and even to generations past as the first bear-shaped honey bottle was produced in 1957). Explore other examples of tangible items/elements that connect both time periods.

• Discuss the structure of the novel. How do the intertwined historical documents (including news reports, oral histories, letters, and school curricula of various styles and tones) enrich the narrative for readers? Read them again on their own. How does each of the varied historical materials that the author includes affect how you understand the context or the history of the narrative’s events? How would the overall narrative be different without them?

• The novel starts with a scholarly narrator who frames the narrative, and then switches to an omniscient narrator, punctuated by these historical documents. This allows the author to introduce otherwise awkward exposition of “historical” context. What other purposes do this narrative framing and occasional documents serve? You could discuss specific examples of tone, foreshadowing/misdirection, or evidence of a sense of hope for an postwar peace.

• In the interview with author Omar El Akkad in this Reader’s Guide, he stated “there was no way to write this story with a happy ending—it simply wouldn’t be the same book, it would be something completely different from what I felt I needed to write.”Do you agree? Why or why not?

Characters and Motivation

• The narrator Benjamin Chestnut reveals that he is dying of cancer. Why is this an important aspect of his character? How might his imminent death influence his decisions?

• What scenes from earlier in Sarat’s life might foreshadow later events? What events most spur her to act as she does?

• Late in the novel the younger Bragg tells Sarat that Albert Gaines knew she was different from his other recruits and referred to her as “truculent.” Is this the most important trait Gaines sees in her? What other personality or behavioral traits does Sarat exhibit early on that would indicate her disposition and potential to follow the path she does?

• How are various alliances and allegiances formed during the war? How do loyalties form (and dissolve)?

• How are secrets kept (and revealed) by the novel’s characters?

• How is the issue of survival characterized and approached in terms of each character’s situation and beliefs?

• How do the different characters react differently to the situations they find themselves in during the war and how do their actions relate to their own futures?

• Track the relationships of the three Chestnut siblings over time.

• Sarat’s friendship with Markus outlasts the years and their varied (official) alliances. What draws them together and what keeps them loyal to each other?

• Karina is first an aide to the Chestnut siblings and later marries Simon. What are her motivations in becoming more entangled with the family?

• Late in the book Sarat recalls Albert Gaines telling her, “Right or wrong … a man from our country always says exactly what he means, and stands by what he says.” But “even that,” she determines, “was a lie.” How does this conclusion motivate Sarat’s actions?

• In what ways does Sarat fulfill the role of narrative heroine? In what ways is she unlike any other?

• In an act that profoundly changes the course of American history, one of Bud Baker’s twin sons lets Sarat and her ambulance pass through the border into the Blue. Why do you think he did so?

• As noted above, Martin Baker permits Sarat to cross the border. Track other examples of possible compassion or even mercy that characters in the novel exhibit with those who are seemingly their enemies.

• What do you admire or dislike about each main character? Does this opinion change over the course of the novel?

Issues and Themes

• Why is the story set beginning in 2074? What is the effect on readers of a second American Civil War breaking out only two generations from now?

• The narrator refers to our current era as “soaring, roaring and oblivious.” Do you agree or disagree? Why?

• In the novel, the narrator says the 2020s and 2030s were the last decades “before the planet turned on itself.” How does this timeframe and the above characterization make you re-consider where we are now?

• How is global climate change represented in the novel, in both large and small ways? Explore some of the effects of climate change that the novel addresses. How does this align with what most climatologists are warning about today?

• What role does the setting of the novel in the Southern states play? What does the novel tell us about the people and society of that time and place?

• What different kinds of friendships and familial relationships are evident?

• Track examples of loyalty and betrayal over time.

• In which literary genres would you place American War? How does the book differ from other dystopian or postwar or cli-fi narratives with which you are familiar?

• Track the symbolism of water throughout the novel. How does it constrain the population? How does water free any of the characters?

• There are several references to viruses and infections such as the Reunification Plague. How does this relate to contemporary concerns about weaponized viruses and bio-agents?

• How are the ideas of tension and balance conveyed in the novel, from plot points to characters to narrative details?

• The author has said that “most everything that forms the book—including its setting—is an analogy to something else.” Read the interview with the author that is included in this Reader’s Guide. What do you think some of these analogies might be?

• How do different individuals cope with the war? What are their reactions and their strategies for survival?

• What important roles does the government (either that of the Blue or that of the Red) play?

• “Even broken history is history.” How does this fit into the novel’s narrative? How does it fit into your worldview?

• To Sarat, the only thing that matters is “revenge, the unsettled score.” In the Prologue, her nephew Benjamin says, “This isn’t a story about war. It’s about ruin.” How do these statements correlate?

• Explore Sarat’s feelings (through her actions) about her nephew Benjamin, the young son of her brain-injured brother Simon. How does Benjamin’s mother Karina explain some of Sarat’s behavior?

• As a child, Benjamin was in awe of his aunt Sarat but later he finds a way to hurt her. Discuss how readers are expected to feel empathy for Sarat when her own nephew—her only living relative—wants to hurt her.

• Despite wanting to hurt her, Benjamin ultimately retains the first page of Sarat’s journal to keep with him it all times. Track how his feelings shift in his adult narration of Sarat’s story.

• How is the mundane cast against the drama of war?

• What role does morality play in the novel? How does it shift?

• What surprised you most about the world the author paints in the very near future?

• Why was it necessary for the author to include some scenes of violence? Share your experience of reading about the massacre in Camp Patience, or the scene of Sarat being waterboarded, for example.

• Is the story ultimately tragic? Do you see any points of light?

• In one of the historical documents in the novel, the “Peace Office Senior Negotiator” says, “You fight the war with guns, you fight the peace with stories.” What is meant by this?

• The author, in the interview in this Reader’s Guide, states that he has “long viewed literature as a kind of weaponized empathy.” What does he mean? How do you see the process of reading as fostering empathy?

• Karina comes to understand that “the misery of war represented the world’s only truly universal language.” What is your reaction to this sentiment?

• Referencing Karina, the narrator writes, “The universal slogan of war, she’d learned, was simple: If it had been you, you’d have done no different.” How do you respond to this belief?

• What is the significance of the book ending with evidence of further climate change, and an uncertain future?

Speculative / Personal Questions for Discussion or Writing

• What do you think the author’s motivations were in writing this novel?

• After she is released from Sugarloaf prison, Sarat is in most ways disconnected from others around her, from the world altogether. What do you think the presumably reflective process of keeping journals does for her?

• Do you relate more to Sarat or to other characters? Which ones and why?

• Did the novel make you look at or feel differently about those who become involved in terrorist activities?

• Why are so many readers (and increasingly writers) drawn to stories about war or potential apocalypse?

• Would this story affect older readers differently than younger ones? Southern more than Northern? Why?

• What do you think would happen if most of the coastal population of the United States moved into the interior of the country? Imagine what it would be like if a third of the population was gone. Or if much of the desert Southwest was now the territory of Mexico.

• This novel’s devastating war is predicated on the effects of global climate change, which continue to accrue. What do you think the country of the novel will look like 25 or 50 years in the future?

• During the war, drones often referred to by civilians as “birds,” reign terror from the skies and later they hover and sometimes lose power and fall to the ground (but still inflict tremendous damage and elicit traumatic responses). How do you envision technology’s role in either war or peacekeeping in the 21st century?

• In the novel, after the Chestnuts experience the massacre at Camp Patience, dignitaries express that their “thoughts and prayers” are with the remaining family members. This echoes common sentiments we hear from politicians today after a death or other tragedy. What are the similarities and the differences in the governments’ responses to the needs of civilians today and in the future world of American War?

• In what ways do you find the actions of the fictional U.S. government (for example, the biological attack on South Carolina that resulted in its quarantine) to be realistic? Or do they seem exaggerated?

• How does the experience of the internally displaced refugees in the novel compare to what you know about the current record number of real-life global refugees?

• If you woke up to the news that the United States was in another civil war, how would you react?

• How do stories function in a society and for the individual? What are the purposes of telling and retelling stories to ourselves and to others?

Additional Writing Projects

• Review some postcards that you have kept. What do they tell you about the past? Think about both personal and public histories.

• Write about your own connection to home and speculate on how you would react if you were forcibly removed from it.

• In the novel,although Benjamin is recounting what he read in Sarat’s journals, the reader is not hearing her voice directly.Write a few entries in a reflective journal by Sarat. Use her voice. Try exploring differing eras of her life, and varied circumstances.

• Write to yourself as a child. Have that child write back. Then write to yourself 20-50 years in the future. Have that older person write back. In all cases, focus on your place in the world as you envision it as that time.

By submitting this form, you are consenting to receive marketing emails from: Writers & Books, 740 University Ave., Rochester, NY, 14607, http://www.wab.org. You can revoke your consent to receive emails at any time by using the SafeUnsubscribe® link, found at the bottom of every email. Emails are serviced by Constant Contact